The Garden of Survival | Page 9

of the vigorous and healthy male--the animal: my six feet three, my muscular system, my inartistic and pedestrian temperament. Fairly clean-minded, I hope I may be, but beyond all question I am the male animal incarnate. It was, indeed, the thousand slaveries of the senses, individually so negligible, collectively so overwhelming, that forced me upon my knees before her physical loveliness. I must tell you now that this potent spell, alternating between fiery desire and the sincerest of repugnance, continued to operate. I complete the confession by adding briefly, that after marriage she resented and repelled all my advances. A deep sadness came upon her; she wept; and I desisted. It was my soul that she desired with the fire of her mighty love, and not my body. . . . And again, since it is to myself and to you alone I tell it, I would add this vital fact: it was this "new beauty which my finest dreams have left unmentioned" that made it somehow possible for me to desist, both against my animal will, yet willingly.
I have told you that, when dying, she revealed to me a portion of her "secret." This portion of a sacred confidence lies so safe within my everlasting pity that I may share it with you without the remorse of a betrayal. Full understanding we need never ask; the solution, I am convinced, is scarcely obtainable in this world. The message, however, was incomplete because the breath that framed it into broken words failed suddenly; the heart, so strangely given into my unworthy keeping, stopped beating as you shall hear upon the very edge of full disclosure. The ambushed meaning I have hinted at remained--a hint.

III
THERE was, then, you will remember, but an interval of minutes between the accident and the temporary recovery of consciousness, between that recovery again and the moment when the head fell forward on my knee and she was gone. That "recovery" of consciousness I feel bound to question, as you shall shortly hear. Among such curious things I am at sea admittedly, yet I must doubt for ever that the eyes which peered so strangely into mine were those of Marion herself--as I had always known her. You will, at any rate, allow the confession, and believe it true, that I--did not recognize her quite. Consciousness there was, indubitably, but whether it was "recovery" of consciousness is another matter, and a problem that I must for ever question though I cannot ever set it confidently at rest. It almost seemed as though a larger, grander, yet somehow a less personal, soul looked forth through the fading eyes and used the troubled breath.
In those brief minutes, at any rate, the mind was clear as day, the faculties not only unobscured, but marvellously enhanced. In the eyes at first shone unveiled fire; she smiled, gazing into my own with love and eager yearning too. There was a radiance in her face I must call glory. Her head was in my lap upon the bed of rugs we had improvised inside the field: the broken motor posed in a monstrous heap ten yards away; and the doctor, summoned by a passing stranger, was in the act of administrating the anaesthetic, so that we might bear her without pain to the nearest hospital--when, suddenly, she held up a warning finger, beckoning to me that I should listen closely.
I bent my head to catch the words. There was such authority in the gesture, and in the eyes an expression so extraordinarily appealing, and yet so touched with the awe of a final privacy beyond language, that the doctor stepped backwards on the instant, the needle shaking in his hand--while I bent down to catch the whispered words that at once began to pass her lips.
The wind in the poplar overhead mingled with the little sentences, as though the breath of the clear blue sky, calmly shining, was mingled with her own.
But the words I heard both troubled and amazed me:
"Help me! For I am in the dark still!" went through me like a sword. "And I do not know how long."
I took her face in both my hands; I kissed her. "You are with friends," I said. "You are safe with us, with me--Marion!" And I apparently tried to put into my smile the tenderness that clumsy words forswore. Her next words shocked me inexpressibly: "You laugh," she said, "but I----" she sighed--"I weep."
I stroked her face and hair. No words came to me.
"You call me Marion," she went on in an eager tone that surely belied her pain and weakness, "but I do not remember that. I have forgotten names." Then, as I kissed her, I heard her add in the clearest whisper possible, as though no cloud lay upon her